


chimera

by KaleidoKai



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Cousin Incest, F/M, Post-War, Queen Arya
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-18
Updated: 2017-09-18
Packaged: 2018-12-31 06:15:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12126315
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KaleidoKai/pseuds/KaleidoKai
Summary: For a heartbeat, it is real. She reaches out, and she finds him.





	chimera

In her dreams, it is always night.

She dreams of stars, of bright and sweeping and soulful lights, of flying across the sky as she runs over the landscape. In her dreams, she is weightless and graceful, suspended in freedom.

In her dreams, the world falls away into shadow, until it is just her and the twinkling colours, a mosaic of chaos and music, of promises and secrets.

She knows it is a fantasy but for a second - just a second! - she imagines it is real. She is addicted to the feeling, the ethereality of abandoning herself to the darkness.

In moments of madness, she has yearned to fly towards the lights. In such moments, nothing else matters. In such moments, she feels indestructible.

One night, Arya dreams that she does fly to the stars. She feels herself rise higher and higher and the colourful lights whisper encouragements softly in her ear, opening their arms invitingly.

She reaches out, and she finds him.

 

* * *

 

Rays of sun creep into her room, envelopping the walls in its golden embrace. There is a chill suspended in the air, and Arya snuggles deeper into her furs to escape its wrath.

Her heart flutters in her chest, and she squeezes her eyes shut, wishing to return to her burning night, her celestial friends enthralled in a blanket of black. Where once her wolf dreams were drenched in blood and vengeance, she sees only midnight now, where she soars above the world, moving with the winds, blowing this way and that.

And every morning, she returns home. To him.

The thought has her sitting up and shaking her head to rid herself of such fanciful notions. Arya takes a deep breath and lets the smells of the castle invade her senses and clear the murkiness of her wanderings. It is early, too early for most of the inhabitants, but she dresses anyway. She prefers the grounds like this, a peace shrouding her sanctuary.

When she enters the great hall, there is already food prepared for the morning meal. In the heart of winter, there is little choice, but her nightly visions of dancing in the skies often leave her famished, not unlike her daily trainings of dancing like water, a sword in her hand instead of dreams in her head.

There is only one other person at the table, and he watches her as she perches opposite him and piles food on her plate. She nods a greeting towards him, her stomach rolling from hunger - and something else she chooses not to think of.

There is nothing unfamiliar about Jon Snow, nothing unfamiliar in the cold mists of his eyes and in the sweep of his lips. She knows the scrunch of his nose when he worries, the furrow of his brow when he concentrates. The promises of rage and the hints of a summer smile. There is nothing unfamiliar about Jon Snow, and it this certainty that breeds her uncertainty.

He is still staring at her, midnight pooling in his gaze.

"You look lovely."

Arya glances up and frowns, her mouth full of stale toast. She is planning to train after breakfast and had grabbed the first piece of cloth she could find, hanging on her chair. A tunic of dark blue, hardly something glamorous, but it is light and fits well, allowing her to move freely when practicing her needlework.

She realizes he is waiting for a response and she quickly swallows her breakfast. His stare is starting to unsettle her, so she decides to jest to break the tension, "Saw the blacksmith from my window this morning and wanted to make a good impression. Do you think he'll notice I match his eyes?"

The last words are said with a smile, and she expects him to laugh and mock her for her new crush. He does not. He is stone, all grey and black and unmoving. Arya looks back up from her plate and notes the aggressive clenching of his sword hand. She knows the signs. "Jon?" she asks, confused at his sudden anger.

His eyes flash and Arya watches with fascination as they spin like a tornado, a myriad of emotions flickering like a candle - despair, longing, rage, lo-

"There are letters I must write," he says suddenly, dragging her back, before he stands quickly and rushes out of the room.

No, there is nothing unfamiliar about Jon Snow, except for this.

 

* * *

 

Arya stands at the edge, surveying her kingdom, the taste of bitter cold winds at the tip of her tongue.

Winterfell is most beautiful from the top of the Broken Tower, she thinks. For the longest time, she refused to come here, the scent of rutting lions invading her nose and blackening her heart.

But the lions are dead and it reeks only of a distant past and decaying memories. She can never escape that, so she has stopped trying.

She hears his heartbeat before his footsteps.

Jon stops just as he pulls next to her, leaning against the crumbling walls to take her in. He does not speak, and she appreciates him for that.

These moments are precious to her, standing at the threshold of a dying tower and the beyond. One step, one mistake, one moment of madness, and she'd be flying - brief as it would be - before the white landscape would rise up to meet her. She thinks she wouldn't mind being buried in snow. In a world bleached of colour, it carries secrets, shadows, a desire to be discovered.

Like her, she thinks.

"We have a council meeting later today," her companion says, shattering the magic and dragging her back to earth.

"I know," she says simply, her eyes still fixed on her colourless kingdom.

She feels Jon shift, unease rolling off his skin in waves. It makes her frown, and she whips around to face him.

The War had not been kind to Jon, nor its aftermath. Shadows pool around him, within him, wrapping their prey in long thin tendrils of inky blackness. It clings to his hair and his eyes too, a dreadful sadness sinking in his bottomless pits like heavy weights. She wonders if he sees the same in her eyes too, each of their defeats, everyone they've ever lost, carved in his heart as they are carved in hers.

Only his smile is blazing as a winter sun, and it brightens her world impossibly when he gifts it to her. She craves it.

He is not smiling now, however, and Arya quirks an eyebrow at his brooding expression.

"Something the matter?" she asks, delicately.

He shifts uncomfortably, deliberating over his choice of words. A pause, before he finally blurts, "The Northern Lords are growing impatient, Arya. Lord Umber is here with his son, and he's demanding a private audience after the meeting. I expect others will arrive soon after."

She narrows her eyes and bristles. "And what, may I ask, are they waiting for?"

"You know what, my queen."

Arya bites her lip and turns back to gaze out again, her mind whirling. She can hear the blood rushing in her ears and she struggles to contain her rage, white-hot as it is.

She thinks she can feel the same heat from Jon as well, but perhaps she is imagining it.

"We are wolves but the Lords are dogs as far as I can see. I have no desire to have their mutts thrown at me wherever I turn, begging for me to take them to bed," she snaps. Arya knows that she is being irrational, Jon does not deserve to face her wrath. But she is tired, so tired, of hearing the whispers, of avoiding the heated stares.

 _A woman alone is a woman in need,_ she hears them say.

 _She cannot hold the North for long like this,_ they hiss.

 _Watch me,_ she growls back.

A shuddering sigh from Jon breaks her muses, and the sheer unhappiness in his expression douses the fires of her fury until it smolders into ashes, blowing in the wind. She reaches out and rests her hand on his arm, silently asking him to look up.

"I know it is difficult for you, as my Warden and my family, to deal with this," she begins, sympathy lacing her words. "But I will not marry a man who seeks a crown and a warm bed, with not a passing glance at the woman who owns both." Her tone is firm and unrelenting, and Arya raises her chin to stare at her brother, her cousin, in defiance.

She expects him to rebuke her, to tell her to rid herself of childish notions of romance and equality. But he does not.

His lips spread into an open smile, and she revels in its warmth and its brilliance.

"I would not ask you for anything less, little sister."

She closes her eyes as his fingers run through her tresses, touching the strands gently. Long before he made her Queen, he had already crowned her, his hands in her hair and devotion on his lips. A crown of Snow where now sits a crown of ice.

His soft caresses fall like summer rain, and she draws in a shuddering breath. Her eyes are squeezed shut so tightly, stars erupt behind her eyelids, a flashing kaleidoscope of colours. She wants to capture one between her fingers, cradling it as a precious jewel as it burns and freezes and sings in her palm.

She reaches out, and she finds him.

Her eyes snap open, and she realizes her hands are framing his face, his stormy eyes crashing against the turbulent waves of her heart. With each crest, each gust of wind, she is soaring up and up, pain in her chest spreading as her lungs scream for air.

The stillness is deafening, and she realizes his breaths have stopped too.

His eyes are dark and searching, and she sees her reflection in them, framed amongst winter clouds, floating amidst the storm. It radiates promise and possibilities and longing, and Arya is mesmerized into paralysis.

 _This is what he sees when he looks at you_ , a voice whispers in her ear.

"Beautiful," Jon mutters heavily, and for a moment, Arya believes it.

And when his mouth finally settles on hers, it awakens a thirst in her she hadn't known existed, so she pushes back, learning, experimenting, remembering: a tangle of tongues and teeth and desperate touches.

There is nothing unfamiliar about Jon Snow, except for this. And as she discovers him again and again that day, slaking over his body as he does over hers, she revels in her only uncertainty, and embraces it.

 

* * *

 

In her dreams, it is always night.

She dreams of diamonds trapped in the thickness of a black void, of muffled sighs against her neck, of soaring higher and higher in a midnight sky as dark as the eyes that devour her while she is laid out before them.

She moves across the sky as he moves across her body, the heat from the stars burning her, imprinting her, as his hands do on her thighs. In her dreams, the world falls away and she is abandoned to his tenderness, to his mercies as she is pinned beneath him.

She does not know which is fantasy and which is reality, and she does not care.

One night, when they are wrapped up in each other tightly, not even a whisper or a breath between them, Jon asks her.

"Do you still have those dreams? Of flying to the stars?"

She shifts to look at him then. He stares back, and Arya thinks she can count every sparkle, every crystal that hangs suspended in a myriad of greys and black, of shadows and desires that spin in his eyes. A galaxy of stars, just for her.

She no longer dreams, for she is already here.

"No," she says simply, and he smiles.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts!


End file.
